Paths of Virtue: Legal Rhetorics in Judaism and Islam

Abstract

The historical relationship between Judaism and Islam has been the subject of scholarly inquiry for decades. Until recently, however, this fourteen-century-old relationship has gone unremarked on by theorists and historians of rhetoric. In this article, I explore the interconnectivities between legal rhetoric in Judaism and Islam. Looking at the Nicomachaean Ethics and Chaim Perelman’s analysis of rhetoric, justice, and law, I first investigate how, like Aristotle, Jewish and Muslim jurists link virtuousness to obedience to the law. Then, I show how sharia and halakha, Islamic and Jewish law, use rhetoric and systematic argumentation to articulate the place of law in the lives of Muslims and Jews. Finally, using the medieval Mamluk Sultanate and the Geniza community as the basis of a comparatist rhetorical analysis, I demonstrate the lived interconnectedness of Judeo-Muslim legal rhetorics pertaining to marriage, divorce, and the juristic agency of medieval Mediterranean women.

Keywords:

• Islam
• Judaism
• legal rhetoric

Notes

¹ For an assessment of the philosophical typologies of the Talmud, see Sergei Dolgopolski.

² Interestingly, the relationship Shafi’i explores between the Qur’an and the Sunnah is almost exactly the relationship Saadya Gaon describes between the writings of the sages and the Torah in his Book of Doctrines and Beliefs. It is the Torah that presents the law, Saadya writes, and the rabbis that explain how the law is to be carried out. Like Shafi’i, Saadya also uses the example of marriage to illustrate this point, saying that the Torah mandates marriage, but only the rabbis explain how one actually marries.

³ The term “Geniza community” is used here to refer to the Jewish community that is represented by the texts in the Cairo Geniza.